Winnipeg Quick Facts

Established: 1738

Population: Approx. 740 000 (Metro)

Nickname: The Peg

Winnipeg is the capital City of the Province of Manitoba.

Do you have a desire to experience something rarely found in other places? Winnipeg is a multicultural gem and the gateway to your travels in western Canada. It has a history of being self-sufficient and its people are unpretentious and they heartily celebrate the regions cultural vibrancy. Its wide open spaces and prairie surroundings benefit from the beauty of four rivers; the Red, Assiniboine, La Salle and Seine making it a fairly humid city with four distinct seasons to enjoy. Don your skates for a trip down the Assiniboine River in winter, hit the horse racing track in spring, wakeboard or volleyball in the summer and hike or cycle through the many parks during autumn’s natural show. A Christmas specialty is the Winnipeg Christmas Bird Count when thousands of people across North America converge on the city to help count and contribute to the knowledge of bird diversity in the region. Kids are not forgotten with cool family attractions like Tundra Buggy Adventures, the Railway Museum and the Thunder Rapids Fun Park. Check out our travel directory for Winnipeg at the top of this page for more information that will help with your stay.

Winnipeg has three wonderful and signature attractions. The first being the natural haven of FortWhyte Alive, a nature reserve rich in authentic wildlife such as Canada’s geese, deer and bison. It’s an exceptionally wild experience without leaving the city limits, giving you an up-close encounter with wildlife.

Second on our list is the Manitoba Legislative Building. What is so special about this building? Well, not only is it of grand design and the workmanship remarkable; it is an amazing building that has both history and mystery. The building has intricate sphinxes and symbols that make the building truly unique. The building’s architecture apparently has hidden hieroglyphic inscriptions, numerological codes and Freemasonic symbols so intelligently masked it has escaped historians and visitors for nearly a century. You can uncover it all with a guided tour through its grounds. We thoroughly recommend taking a guided tour of Winnipeg to see more of what it has to offer.

Thirdly, we applaud the ‘bird-in-the-hand’ experience at the Oak Hammock Marsh, north of Winnipeg. What can be more astonishing than being part of an important research project of a songbird’s life? The Marsh is also home to over 300 species of birds and countless other wildlife, making it a bird lover’s paradise. It’s also a place of wetland restoration and reinvigoration of a critical wildlife habitat.

There’s so much more than these three attractions; plenty of festivals and sports like the favourite, ice hockey and Canadian football. In fact the Festival du Voyageur is western Canada’s largest winter festival celebrating Winnipeg’s distinct history. Food is also well represented here with some specialties to be found in the realms of confectionary and hot-smoked fish! Arts and culture buffs can head to the Manitoba Museum or the venerable Winnipeg Art Gallery which was founded in 1912.

So plan a trip to Winnipeg and discover the rest of these other exciting places to visit.

Don’t know where to go in Canada? Check out our interactive Canadian map. Click on a city and find out more…